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April 14, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
59:48
1038 Grandiosity: A Listener Convo

A listener takes on his own vanity...

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So thanks very much for taking the time to chat.
You had some issues or questions around the concept of grandiosity, so I'll let you do the intro speech and we'll see if we can make some sense of it.
Yeah, sure. I've spent most of my life with a very strong sense of superiority.
Sort of active disdain for everybody around me.
And I think that it was cultivated in me in childhood.
It's kind of...
It's hard to talk about because it's kind of embarrassing.
And it's an easy way to get people to get pissed off at you, I guess.
But, I mean, it comes out in other ways.
And I don't know. It hasn't been as strong in me as it used to be.
But... It still kind of bothers me.
I was journaling pretty consistently...
For a few weeks, up until the end of March.
And then I just came up on something that just really, really horrified me about myself.
And I just, I had to put it aside for a couple weeks.
Just because it was so frightening.
Just a lot of anger.
seemed to be something that I didn't really have a lot of control over.
I feel like I'm trailing off into space right here, so.
Sure. Can you tell me a little bit about your cultural or religious background?
Sure. My dad, I guess, was sort of a lapsed Catholic.
He stopped going to church probably when he was a young adult, probably when he left the house, but he read the Bible every day.
And although when I was very young, I didn't go to church daycare or anything, but We moved to Switzerland when I was five, and we spent a lot of time together, me and my dad.
My mother was, I don't know, doing other things a lot or something, but how he would inculcate religion to me is he would talk about Bible stories to me at great length.
Yeah. So I guess that was really my main sort of religious instruction, although later I guess I started going to an Episcopalian church for a few years till I guess I got a little older, probably around nine or ten.
I just couldn't keep up this sort of...
I guess a lot of my faith at the time was really just fear.
And I just couldn't keep that up.
I couldn't keep being afraid of that.
And I just couldn't maintain this sort of belief.
And I felt a lot better after dropping it.
But I mean, it was kind of hard.
Sure, now I understand that.
And you said that your mother kind of drifted through the conversation like a ghost, right?
Because you said your mother... Okay, my mom is incredibly screwed up.
Yeah. I'm not really sure where to start with her.
Well, let's talk a couple of the basics.
Your parents, are they still together?
No, they're divorced. And when did they divorce?
How old were you when they divorced?
I was 15.
And what was the reason for the divorce, at least as it was communicated to you at the time?
It was communicated to me in a lot of ways.
And I picked up on some of the reasons and repressed some of them.
And then there were other reasons that were put forth.
They had these conflicting stories.
They both had different Different reasons for it.
Dad claimed that my mom had been screwing everything with two legs.
And I know my dad had an affair with a secretary and also the woman that he's married to now.
But I mean also, I mean, my dad just abused the hell out of the whole family.
So yeah.
That, I guess, was sort of the major cause, but Mom put up with that forever.
You know, the real reason why she divorced him is absolutely because his career started getting screwed up, and I think she figured it was either now or never if she was going to get out with any money.
So I think that's why she did it.
I don't think it had anything at all to do with how we were treated, how she was treated at all.
I think it was just totally money.
So you mean that she was willing to put up with infidelity in return for a comfortable or monetary lifestyle?
Oh, yeah. I think so.
I think she's willing to put up with any sort of...
I think she's comfortable being abused.
I don't think she likes it any other way, really.
Right, but, um, so for your mom, it was like, infidelity plus money is good, or at least tolerable, but infidelity without money or with a threat towards money is not.
Yeah. Is that right? Well, yeah, and I mean, it wasn't like, it was just a little bit of money.
I mean, my dad was fantastically wealthy.
Sorry, your dad was?
I just want to, your dad was fantastic.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Uh... In 1999, he would brag to me that he was making $20,000 a day in cash and options for the company he was working for.
Well, I mean, not working for, but running, in part.
Right, okay. So he was a real high-flyer, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Not just a little bit.
Sorry, just by the by, it is a truism, of course, of life.
That everybody accepts, but few people believe?
Like they accept it intellectually, but they don't believe it in their heart that money doesn't buy you happiness?
Oh, yeah. It's funny, right?
Because, I mean, he has an American Express black card, which means that one of these years he spent more than $250,000 in a single year.
And yet, I mean, right now he's deeply in debt and whatever, and it just gets you nothing.
It's just kind of weird how he just made all this money just to lose every dime, almost.
And would you say, without going into details, would you say that the method by which he earned his money was just or unjust?
And by that I don't mean criminal.
Oh, unjust, absolutely.
Let's see. I mean, when he was working for Goldman Sachs, he did that for about ten years.
I think that he was probably more ethical.
I don't know. It's really hard to tell.
But, I mean, I think the constraints that he was in kind of kept him under control because, I mean, there were punishments for, I don't know, breaking the law and stuff like that.
I mean, they take that kind of thing seriously.
To a certain extent, not as much as maybe many people would think, but to a certain extent.
But when he was at this other place, I mean, he did make it after they forced him to resign, of course.
Oh, yeah, I was the whistleblower.
I knew what they were doing and all this stuff.
But of course, I mean, he happily took...
The millions when they were defrauding their institutional clients and doing just massive insider trading.
Yeah, I mean my… That's how the company made its bones.
Every single trader on the floor was trading ahead of… The moves from the big clients.
Right, right. I mean, this is a gross generalization, but, you know, most brokers, and I worked at a brokerage company as a programmer, a bunch of lying scum wads, frankly.
I mean, it's a really, really filthy way to make a living.
Well, yeah. And, I mean, it's funny because, you know, he said, you know, oh, I'm in the technology side of the business or whatever, and he made himself out to be this big technology guy, you know, but he doesn't even know how to type.
Can I just ask you, I don't know if it's you or somebody else, but there's a fair amount of background crackling.
Are you moving your microphone at all or moving around?
Oh, yeah, sorry. I'm just sort of rolling up my sleeves.
Yeah, if you could just find a place for it and leave it there, that'd be great.
Thanks. Yeah, sure.
Oh, no problem. So he was a high-flying guy.
Do you know if he went through, because this is not uncommon in these kinds of people, did he go through mood swings so there'd be an up and then a crash?
Sorry?
Let me know.
Yeah, yeah. I'd say so, yes.
Very, yes. I just find it funny because, I mean, that's like who he was.
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure he would go through these manic episodes followed by these depressive episodes.
People would just ride out the storms, right, as best they could.
Yeah, like yesterday in the call-in show where his father would throw stuff around.
That's what my dad would do sometimes.
He'd come back from a business trip on Friday and he would often be gone for the weekdays for a lot of my childhood, I guess.
I mean, that was just wonderful when he was gone.
Just wonderful. Although, I mean, my mother was sort of like a living blob or something, just there to, or like a plant, just there to photosynthesize from PBS on a couch.
You know, it's just bizarre.
Uh... He would come back on Friday and he'd be pissed off as hell.
And of course my mom would just accumulate all these catalogs and stuff and they'd just pile up high on the kitchen table and she'd throw her clothes on the floor and in her closet.
And he'd come home and he'd get really mad.
And then he'd just like throw all the papers and stuff on the floor.
He'd go into the refrigerator for no reason and throw out all the food onto the floor, you know, breaking glass and stuff.
And then he'd go into my room, get pissed off and throw all my stuff on the floor.
And he'd go into my mom's room with her closet.
This closet was like his obsession because she'd always leave it messy and...
I don't know, it just seemed like this closet was his nemesis.
So he used a form of material perfectionism as his bullying weapon of choice, is that right?
Yeah, yeah. Nothing was ever clean enough.
You know, you'd have a sweep and stuff after meals and stuff and, you know, you'd do it for an hour.
We'd have to clean for like an hour or so after every meal and, you know, if there's a single crumb anywhere on the floor, like a speck of dust, you know, you're a piece of crap.
For not paying, well, in harsher language than that, you know, you're the most worthless human being imaginable for missing a speck somewhere.
Right, so there's, I mean, again, this is, I'm no clinician, right, so this is just nonsense, amateur stuff, be aware of that, but...
It would seem to me that there's a certain kind of manic depression and a certain kind of OCD or obsessive compulsive disorder that's floating around.
And this is not to say that he's not responsible, right?
But I'm just trying to sort of get a picture of this kind of stuff because grandiosity and these kinds of mood swings go hand in hand and that's why I asked about them.
Yeah. Well, I think his relationship to me was he wanted me to be something that he could brag about.
Like one of his favorite activities that he would tell me, oh, how we did this and how he would impress his business friends with it.
Which seems kind of weird.
He doesn't really have any friends.
So, I mean, the idea that he would care about how...
How they thought of him is a little strange.
But, I mean, I guess that's who he was.
Like, for example...
Well, I mean, this sort of stuff actually started in my infancy.
I was born...
This sort of stuff, and I just want to make sure I understand which sort of stuff.
Yeah, I'm getting into it.
Like, he'd have me do...
Like, when I was an infant, I was...
Born a little sickly, not super premature, but I mean, it wasn't great.
And the way he shared his impression of me, and he thought this was a funny story, you know, he'd laugh.
Yeah. He said that when he saw me, he thought I was a blue chicken.
And that's what he said. You know, oh my god, my son is a blue chicken.
And he would laugh when telling the story.
And my mother was in the hospital.
She had some sort of bad hemorrhage.
And the way he put it is she almost died.
And he rescued her by alerting the doctors that his wife was bleeding to death or whatever.
Sorry to interrupt, but I just want to make sure I understand the polarity here.
Is it fairly safe to assume, and tell me if I'm correct or not, that your father was fairly brutal in his insults towards other people, but was himself hypersensitive to insults?
Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
Yeah. That was his way of dealing with people, I guess.
Well, not exactly dealing.
It's his way of bullying.
Anyway, go on. So anyway, while I was an infant, I get out of the hospital spending like a week in an incubator or whatever.
And so one of the first things he does is he takes me swimming with him.
In a lap pool.
The way he told the story is he would take me swimming and I would just sort of cling to him or hang onto the kickboard for dear life.
And he would always tell the story as a joke, as if it was funny.
And he would smile and...
Well, he'd take me out and he'd say, and he'd describe me as blue and shivering, and he was afraid that I would die, and so he rubbed me in a towel, convinced that I was dying or dead.
And he didn't just do this once, but many times.
Even if it's apocryphal or exaggerated, a tall tale, it's still pretty screwed up.
But he would do stuff like that with me.
Are you moving it at all?
Oh yeah, I just scratched my head.
I'm sorry. Okay, no problem.
So, yeah, he liked doing that sort of thing with me.
Like, when I was probably around five on, he would take me running for very long stretches, like seven or eight miles, up and down hills.
I'd get...
I mean, to drink, I would get one 12-ounce bottle of Gatorade in the middle of the...
I guess the workout, like every Saturday we do this.
This was when we were living in Zurich.
Sorry, just by the by, I mean, this just reminds me of, I mean, there's some similarities but some significant differences between our fathers.
When I was 16, I lived in Africa with my father for a while.
He was a geologist, so he walked for a living.
He took me on a hike through mountains, and it was the same thing.
He would power, because that's what he did, was he hiked as a geologist.
I wasn't as fit then as he was.
I was just dragging my ass after we would climb 2,000 or 3,000 feet up these parts.
In a day, I was dying.
And of course, it was Africa, so it was like 12 million degrees, and I was coming over from Canada, which wasn't.
And he did the same thing.
He actually gave me a pebble to suck on and said, well, if you're thirsty, this will produce saliva.
And it's just like, what the heck?
And he would literally be like 200 or 300 yards ahead of me, because I would be getting tired and slowing down.
He'd just power on ahead of me.
Right, right. That's something my dad would do to, you know, get me to know that...
And you'd feel this real disapproval or embarrassment about your sort of lack of physical fitness or whatever relative to his, you know, amazing vanity body or whatever.
Anyway, I just wanted to mention that sort of reminded something of...
Okay. Please go on. Well, like every Saturday, from when I was five on, I guess, later, I guess, probably after my fifth birthday, is we'd run up about 200, like we'd go down a hill about three quarters of a mile to a big, big stair, because, I mean, they're all, because, you know, The area is kind of hilly.
It's like a valley and there's a lake.
So we'd go up about 200 stairs.
Sometimes he'd make me run it up.
Sometimes he'd let me walk it if it was raining and slippery because, I mean, he was afraid of slipping, I guess.
Then we'd run up a dirt road, kind of twisting around to get to the Hollandbad, the public gym kind of thing.
And then I guess we'd take karate lessons.
And then he'd swim, and he'd have me swim with him.
And we did this kind of weird thing where he would fight me underwater, like you do karate with me underwater.
He would race me too, swimming.
Did that activity of karate underwater, did it hurt?
No, not really. Okay.
But I mean, I don't know.
I mean, because I kind of made it sort of a focus to get used to pain, because this was sort of, I mean, I kind of had to.
Right. Right. And I mean, I think I get a picture.
I mean, certainly, I have no doubt.
Yeah, sure. And then after that, there'd be more running, right?
Yeah, no, this is all staggeringly abusive.
I mean, of that, there's no question, particularly starting at the age of five.
So what is it that you got out of this interaction with your father when you sort of look back on how it settled down within you?
What is it that you got out of it in terms of your understanding of the nature and morals of your father?
I think it was framed to me as that, I don't know, you...
That this is what makes you a superior person.
Sorry, I understand that your dad was all about aim high and never give in and work hard.
He was manic, right?
So he's going to put these ridiculous standards.
But of course, he didn't have these same standards for himself as a father, right?
So he's like, well, the important thing is that you run five miles, and that's called perfection.
The important thing is not that I be a gentle, kind, and loving father.
That has nothing to do with perfection, right?
Yeah, I find it a little funny.
I mean, like, gentleness and kindness and my dad.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
It's just funny. Well, but it's not, right?
Yeah, I mean, it's not...
Sorry to interrupt you, and I know it's a little startling, and I know you have a laughter defense, which obviously I understand and sympathize with, but it's not funny at all.
I mean, this is horrible, right?
This is an absolutely nightmarish and horrible existence.
I mean, this is like a fucking Russian gulag, right?
Yeah, and I find Solzhenitsyn very...
I like the...
Gulag Archipelago. Well, yes, but it's horrible that you identify with that, right?
Yes. Oh, yeah.
I picked up on it very quickly.
Sorry, and I just want to go back for a second.
And there's no correct or incorrect.
It's just things that I'm noticing. But I had asked you what was your experience of this and what did you get out of it?
Oh, horror, I guess.
Like when I get home.
Hang on. Hang on. I wasn't finished.
It's okay. I had said, what is your experience of this?
And you said, you replied, it was portrayed...
In the moment, right now?
Yeah, just now, right?
I'm just pointing something out here, right?
Because we're trying to get a handle on the grandiosity side.
Yeah, I feel separated.
Okay, just hang on one sec.
Give me 30 seconds. Okay, sure.
So, I had said, what did you get out of this, or what was your understanding of the nature and ethics of your father?
And you said, it was portrayed to me as, right?
Okay. And do you know why I stopped on that?
Yeah, because those are, I guess, those are weasel words.
No, it's not that they're weasel words.
I believe you that it genuinely was portrayed to you as this, but I said, what is your experience?
And you said, it was portrayed to me as, which is actually somebody else's propaganda, right?
Yeah. So when I asked you what your experience, and this is not a right or wrong, certainly no criticism, I'm just pointing out, right?
Because we're looking for clues as to how to unravel the grandiosity.
Okay, I was very proud of it for a long time.
Right. Okay. So it was portrayed...
And where would you say you are with your experience of this?
Like, in terms of comparison to any kind of remotely decent or non-abusive parenting relative to the childhood that you really wish you could have had filled with, you know, fun and laughter and intimacy and all that kind of stuff.
And love, which there was nothing.
This is sadism, right? This is just a sadistic...
Yeah, I find that completely unimaginable.
Well, it's not completely unimaginable to you, I guarantee you that, because if it were, you would feel no pain, right?
Yeah, I guess.
Well, no, I mean, that's an important point, right, because if it were completely unimaginable to you, then you would have no standard, right?
Right. So, the fact that you have certain after effects from this nightmarish existence is because you do know that it is in your gut, you do know that it is a savage deviation and a nightmarish evil compared to any kind of reasonable or decent or loving parenting, which is not to say perfect parenting, but, I mean, this is off the charts, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I guess my mother said stuff about it, but saying things...
What does it matter?
When she was aiding and abetting the whole process.
Well, you were listening to the call-in show yesterday, right?
Yeah, yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
I just felt so angry at my mother again, just because I think...
I don't know.
I think I hate her more than even my dad, because she knew that it was wrong.
Well, and she gave your dad children, right?
She found him. Not just one child, but she tried to have children immediately after me and miscarried twice.
And then she had my sister years later.
Right. And then when she had enough, she left, right?
Yeah. But you had to still stick around as a lunatic, right?
That's right. That's right.
And, you know, she hugged my sister when she told us that she was getting divorced, and she started, you know, squirting out a little tear, and I just hated her.
I hated her. I hated her.
Right. Right.
No, I mean, I understand that.
Now, could your father, when he was in these phases, I'm guessing that, at least for significant portions of his life, he could actually control his behavior, right?
Right. Sure, of course.
If it was like, take your son to work day, he was the most wonderful guy.
At like a dinner meeting or something, I'd be there and he'd be polite and stuff.
know so it wasn't like and the reason for that I mean you know why I asked that which is basically that if your father had a biochemical disorder then there would be trauma that you would need to deal with like if he became a biologically based schizophrenic literally heard yes literally became psychotic you know was carted off and had to be medicated with Thorazine or whatever like if he if he had a legitimate biochemical brain disorder, then you would still be traumatized, but there would not be the same sadistic intent, of course, right?
Yeah.
But since he can control his behavior, and he also knows how to portray a good father, right?
Yeah.
So he's completely responsible for what he did.
Thank you.
Yeah. Okay, I mean, that's just an important thing to differentiate, right?
Sure. He knew what a good dad was, and he could control his behavior and imitate, in a sense, a good dad, right?
So he was in control of his behavior.
Now, this is not to say maybe there was some biochemical basis to the manic depression, but he was able to control his behavior and to portray a good father in certain situations, right?
Yeah. He thought he was doing much better than his father had done.
Right, but when it came to, for instance, like, so he worked in the securities industry, when he wanted to work in the securities industry, no doubt, he knew that there was certain knowledge that you had to attain, that you had to gain, and so he would go and take the securities course, he would go and study, and so on, right?
Right. Yes, he has two law degrees.
Two law degrees. Okay, so he knows that if you want to become good at something and you start from a position of no knowledge that you have to go through a study process, right?
Yes. And he admitted that his own father was not good, right?
He wouldn't say that.
He wouldn't say that, no.
But he'd say that, I mean, he attributed it to a leg problem in his work as a doctor, that he was too busy treating patients to spend too much time to him, and also he got drunk too often.
Okay, but he would say that he himself, your father, did not have a great template about how to be a great father, right?
No. You know, his parents beat the hell out of him.
Okay, so I'm just trying to give you the differentiations here, right, so that you can see, I hope, see your father a little more clearly.
So he knows that when he's in a state where he needs knowledge to achieve some end, to work in the securities industry or to become accredited as a lawyer, to pass the bar, that when he starts from a state of no knowledge in which is to achieve an end, a goal, that he goes through a process of studying, right?
Now, he also knows that he was not in a position of having great knowledge with regards to being a great father, right?
Yeah. So, by his own logic, in terms of if you wish to achieve a goal, you should do some studying if you lack the knowledge beforehand, He clearly should have done some studying about what it means to be a great father, right?
Because he became a father and he certainly had time to prepare for that, right?
He meets your mom, they date, they get engaged, they get married, they have kids.
He's got years to prepare, right?
Not just a few years.
I mean, they met when they were 19 and my mother had me when she was 36.
Okay, so they had like 27 years.
Sorry, 17 years to deal with this, right?
Yes. Okay. So your father had 17 years to prepare for fatherhood, and he certainly knew because he was not a homeless guy.
He actually had gone through a process of study to get his law degrees and his securities certification and so on, right?
And do you know if he ever pursued any knowledge about becoming a better parent?
He might have read one book about it.
So the effective answer is no, right?
No, yeah, of course not.
I mean, that's like me saying, well, I read economics in one lesson.
Okay, so that's just something to understand, that in the areas in his life where he wished to achieve goals, he did the studying and the work and the requisite necessary stuff in order to achieve those goals.
But when it came to being a parent, he actively avoided knowledge, right?
Yes, of course. And he would always say that being a father was the most important thing in his life.
That it was his highest value.
I'm sorry, that is funny, but it's really tragic, right?
Yes. Because relative to the effort that he put into his career, into his education and so on, it was nothing, right?
Yes. And my mother the same way.
She put more effort into PBS than she put into me.
Right, right, right.
And do you have a theory as to why they had children?
He wanted them badly, I guess, to abuse.
But Mom didn't.
I think she wanted to have children to deflect abuse from her.
So you guys were like the biological punching bags...
So to speak, right? Like, I'm angry and I can't get mad at people at work, so I'm going to come home and force march my kid up 500 flights a day.
Yeah, because Goldman would fire him if he did what he did, if he treated his employees like he treated me and how he treated my mother.
All right. So, okay, now we can start to work towards how this virus passed along.
Now, you had used the word grandiosity, and what is your working definition, whether it's instinctual or emotional or linguistic is fine, what is your working definition of the term grandiosity?
Just thinking that you're somehow innately superior to everybody around you.
Okay, and what if you are?
I mean, let's say you're Einstein, right?
Yeah, that's something that's, you know...
Got me into false humility, stuff like that.
I was thinking a lot about this last night.
Maybe I'm not that fantastic and I'm just particularly good at avoiding suppression, just being defiant.
I'm sorry, I didn't follow that last part at all.
Could you try again? The way school works is they beat you down, they grind you into a paste, and I was just good at avoiding it.
Good at avoiding being ground down into a paste?
Yeah. Oh no, but what does school have to do with it?
I mean, your father was the one who ground you down into a paste, wasn't he?
Yeah. Because you went to school, right?
Yes. And I mean, getting bad marks, I mean...
I would be dead.
You know, getting an A- was horrible.
It was like the house would explode.
Well, sure, because you were no longer serving the narcissistic vanity of your father, right?
Yeah. His ego, which was dependent upon manipulating and controlling others' opinions, would take a blow if he felt that somebody thought that you were somehow inferior, which would then make him feel somewhat inferior, which would provoke the narcissistic rage, right?
Yeah, but this kind of pisses me off.
If he was always saying that I was fantastic and all this, why did they put me through school?
They skipped me ahead a grade when I was younger.
Why didn't he press to keep me skipped ahead?
Why didn't he take me out of the entire system?
I don't understand why they had to subject me to this nonsense.
For so long. Okay, wait, wait, wait.
So I think here we're getting to the core of the issue, right?
Yeah. So if you have, and I understand this emotionally, right, but we have to sort of look at this philosophically.
I mean, to me, that's always the reason out of the room.
So you're saying, well, if this was the case, if they felt that I was superior or this or that, then why didn't they provide better services to me in terms of moving me ahead in school or this or that or the other, right?
Yeah. And you feel outraged or frustrated about that?
Yeah. And do you genuinely believe that you don't understand why that was occurring?
No, I think I know why.
Why? Because it was frightening to them.
What was? It was frightening to them.
But sorry, what was?
I think intelligence was frightening to them.
Well, but your intelligence wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with whether you were ahead in school.
Unless I'm missing you. Yeah, you're right.
Okay, let's walk through this.
Can you repeat the question? Sure.
Well, I was sort of...
You said you got frustrated, which I totally understand, and you said, I don't know why they didn't move me ahead more in school if education was such a value and I was so smart and this and that and the other, right?
Yeah. And that would have been of benefit to you, is that right?
Yeah, absolutely. Well, how would that have benefited them?
Not at all. So I'm not sure.
Well, I don't know. It might have benefited them, but I'm not really sure.
I don't really understand them very well.
Well, I think you do, but they don't want you to, right?
So I start from the premise that everybody's a genius and everybody's a philosopher, and certainly that's true with regards to our own families, right?
Yes. So I'll step you through a little bit here, and we'll see if we can bang some fruit off the tree, so to speak.
Okay. Okay, so let's just put some tentative labels on your parents, which is not to say that this is the sum total of their entire being or anything like that, but there are some things that we can definitely start with as some bedrock, right? So narcissistic and sadistic, because sadistic is narcissistic, right?
That you only existed as a way of providing your parents a sense of power, right?
Yeah. So, they have no interest in you as an individual.
You can't abuse a child.
You can't laugh at him and call him a blue chicken.
You can't take him when he's five for running five miles, which is completely lunatic, right?
I mean, that's like you and I having to run 25 miles.
It's crazy. No, not five miles.
More like eight, nine...
Okay, that really doesn't matter, right?
Yeah, and on top of a bunch of other stuff.
So, I mean, it was, like, crazy.
Okay, now, you don't need to get behind in pushing the cart.
I'm just starting here, right?
So, don't worry. I'm sorry.
So, you can't have empathy for a child that you're treating in that kind of manner, right?
You can't have empathy for somebody that you're terrifying by being five times their size and throwing shit around a room, right?
Well, he's 6'5", too.
Again, you're behind pushing the cot.
I got it, right? Just trust me on this, that I got that it's a nightmare.
You don't have to put more nightmare in.
I get that it's 100% nightmare.
In fact, 150% nightmare.
I have no problem with that, okay?
So, given that your parents are sadistic and narcissistic, If you really got that in your core, there would be no reason to be frustrated at the mystery of why they didn't do something for your benefit.
I'm not saying that it wouldn't be painful, but it wouldn't be confusing.
Okay.
I mean, that's sort of like saying, why isn't my torturer giving me a massage?
Thank you.
Thank you.
I mean, that would be a crazy question, right?
I'm not saying a crazy question, right?
But that would be a question that wouldn't make much sense, right?
Yeah. So, what's happening is that when we have sadistic and narcissistic parents, we want to see the truth about them, because that will set us free of relationships.
Yes, I felt that very strongly.
They don't want us to see the truth, right?
No. And that's why, as I talk about in my book on truth, that's why they use principles and perfection and quality and cleanliness and excellence and all this other kind of crap.
I just have high standards, so sue me, right?
Yeah. And that's why they go to material or public kinds of show, right?
I have two law degrees, I make $20,000 a day and crap like that, right?
But you didn't want a dad who made $20,000 a day.
You wanted a dad who'd give you a hug and talk to you like a reasonable human being, right?
Well, he would very rarely.
If he maybe had three glasses of wine in him, sometimes he could be pleasant.
If there was somebody from outside the house at the table or something.
Well, but that's not the definition of pleasant, right?
That's the definition of... No, it's not.
And it also is part of the sadism.
So when sadistic parents are nice to you, it's part of the sadism.
Because it says, I can be nice, I'm just not going to be nice.
Which is humiliating, right?
Right. Because if they genuinely had no capacity to be nice, we would just, as adults, learn to recalibrate our standards, right?
And say, well, I can't play catch with a guy who's got no arms, right?
Mm-hmm. So that's, you know, the niceness is part of the sadism.
Especially when they're nice to strangers, because then they're humiliating us even more.
Because they're saying, well, I'm going to scare the shit out of you and brutalize you, but then when this Jehovah's Witness comes to the door, I'm going to laugh and have jokes, right?
Right. So this Jehovah's Witness or whoever, this guy selling door-to-door, some cashier, some waitress, they're infinitely more important to me and get much, much better treatment from me than you do, right?
Which makes you feel like an Adam, right?
Right. And this stuff, again, with all the caveats about me being an amateur, right?
But this stuff is what psychologists call character logic.
It is the personality.
It's not a defense anymore.
As I write about in my novel, right?
The defenses sometimes, and actually depressingly often, will overwhelm the personality.
The very personality they originally attempted...
When you face a threat, you get defenses, and the defenses are there to address the original personality, but they will overwhelm the original personality and replace it, right?
It's like a coup, so to speak, like a military coup.
And when that happens, there's no return.
And particularly if your father...
Did not go through any kind of phase of empathetic development.
And this is a brain development.
This occurs early on in childhood, really early on in infancy, but particularly mid-infancy to toddlerhood, where you get eye contact, where you get mirroring, where You know, you smile and your mother smiles back, where you roll a ball and someone rolls it back, and you interact, and you are treated with empathy, and you learn to really recognize the existence of other human beings in a fundamental emotional way.
That is a process of brain development.
That is a period of brain development.
And if it is missed, if you go through significant trauma during that time, you just don't have the capacity anymore.
You can mimic it for short periods of time.
There was no empathy in his household at all, period.
Right.
And you can mimic that for a short period of time, as you can see, right?
Yeah.
And if you're willing to do the work, then you can actually learn to go through some of those difficulties, go through some of that trauma, and learn to regrow some aspects of yourself.
But it's kind of like there's a language phase, right?
And around two to three years old, if you miss that language phase, you never learn language very well.
You can learn it to some degree.
But it's just a part of the brain development.
So if your father missed that and took no steps to deal with that later on in life, then there's going to be no part of him that empathizes.
In fact, empathy is going to enrage him, right?
Because it's going to bring back all the early trauma.
Oh yeah, that makes him so angry.
Yeah, because he's going to perceive it as pitying, he's going to perceive it as putting him down, and he's going to try and level up by blowing up in rage, right?
Right. That's like the worst kind of weakness to him.
Right, because that's what he so desperately needed and didn't get, and it exposes his vulnerability, and any time he was vulnerable with his parents, he would get attacked.
So vulnerability equals attack.
He preemptively strikes by attacking first.
I mean, this is all very dense and complex stuff, but the reality is that is his personality, certainly by now.
After you've abused children, there's no coming back for you as a human being.
There's no coming back.
I don't mean like you get mad and you yell at your kid and then you apologize, right?
Or maybe you spank your kid once and then you go, well, you know, that really is not a good way to do it.
I'm going to find other ways. I'm not talking about being perfect.
But if you systematically and sadistically torture a child, there's no restitution that is possible.
And where restitution is impossible, forgiveness or an amelioration of the problem is impossible.
Now, the grandiosity was, you say, this feeling that you are superior to everyone else.
What is the definition of that superiority?
I mean, we understand that for your dad, it was accomplishment and money, right?
Education, accomplishment, money, all the outwards show of superiority.
And what is it for you?
I guess for me, it was academic achievement.
And when I was younger, well, actually, no, not really even when I was younger, but I guess physical and sexual achievement, too.
Okay, so getting good grades and being a man.
Yeah, not just getting good grades, but just being, I wanted to be crushingly more intelligent than everybody around me.
Okay, and what do you mean by crushingly?
That's an interesting way of... Just overpoweringly, just no more than they do in every single conceivable category.
Just be so much...
Or just to cultivate that appearance, even.
Okay, but for the purpose of what?
Like, what would that do for you?
It would ward off attack.
Well, it wouldn't ward off attack because it is an attack, right?
Because you didn't want to be intelligent or learn things in order to generate a love of knowledge in other people, right?
No, absolutely not.
Yeah, no, no. Yeah, no.
I wanted to do it so that other people would feel small.
Okay, and what did that ward off?
So if you were unable to achieve that, what feelings arose in you?
Just kind of nasty anger.
Okay, and so if you were unable, like if you came across somebody who had five PhDs from Harvard or whatever, and they started lecturing...
Well, I'd charm them, I think.
I think I'd avoid getting into it.
Yeah, I'd avoid getting into it.
Is that right? Yeah, with my ex's father, he's a top law professor at NYU. We could talk for hours.
I managed to get him to go from, I'm going to kill you, to hugging me and loving me and thinking I'm the...
The brightest person in Brooklyn, you know?
Okay, so you feel that this is a kind of power, and I'm not saying that this is all what you feel or believe, but you believe this is a kind of power, right?
Now, do you realize it's the exact opposite of power deep down?
I mean, I don't know if you've explored that aspect in yourself.
Let me ask you a simple question, if that's not clear.
Who's more free, the prison guard or the prisoner?
Excuse me? One of the words is garbled.
Sure. Who is more free...
The prison guard or the prisoner?
The prisoner. How so?
Because the prison guard has to...
I don't know, it seems like his behavior is more restricted.
Well, I don't think that his behavior, and look, I mean, this is why I say everybody's a genius.
This is just my first, you know, pop.
I mean, you perfectly got the right answer, and I bet you you know exactly why.
This is that blink thing, you know, where you process a huge amount amazingly quickly, and you are obviously a very intelligent and very verbally skilled person.
So you got the answer right away.
Then it's tough sometimes to sift through how we got there, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Well, you're absolutely right that the prisoner is more free than the prison guard.
And I can either step you through the answer, but I don't want this call to go on too long because we have lives to lead.
But I'll just give you the answer as I see it.
I'm not saying this is the answer.
Okay. The reason that the prisoner is more free than the prison guard is that the prisoner does not have to lie to himself.
Because if you're thrown in prison unjustly, you can at least sit in the moral truth of your situation.
You don't have to propagandize or mythologize your situation, right?
But if you are a prison guard, you actually and actively have to Believe that the prisoner is evil and you are virtuous and you are standing tall for justice and these guys are animals and scum and this and that and the other, right?
So the prisoner at least can be free in his own mind, but the prison guard has to enter this distorted funhouse kaleidoscope mirror of justification and moral falsehood, right?
Yeah. So he's not even free in his own mind and of course he's standing around guarding the prisoner all the time, but the prisoner at least can remain free in his own mind, right?
Correct. So, the reason that I was bringing this story up is because you said that you wanted to dominate other people and so on, right?
By crushing them with your brilliance, right?
Yeah. But they're more free, even if that works, even if they bow down before you or whatever and worship your godlike intelligence, they're still much more free than you because you have to pretend that you are superior when you're actually dependent upon other people's approval and obsequence, right? That's not being free.
Yes. So you have to remind yourself that you're superior and that you're free and that you're one of these Nietzschean, Hyperborean gods when in fact you're enslaved to the good opinions of others, right?
Yeah. And if those opinions evaporate, it's just I die, you know?
Yeah, yeah. And the worst thing is that you're not even enslaved to the good opinions of good people, because I am.
I mean, I love my wife to death, and if she ever thinks that I'm doing something wrong, I'm crushed, right?
And we examine it, we explore it.
She's always right. So that's good, right?
There's nothing wrong with depending upon the good opinions of good people, because they can watch your back.
Not good people, but unspeakably evil people.
Well, I think unspeakably evil is another grandiose term, because I'm not saying that's true.
I mean, that's just in my mind.
But what you have to be is around weak people who've also been traumatized in their childhoods, right?
Yeah. Right, because a good and decent person who has any kind of caring about you would call you on your grandiosity.
Why? Because it's not going to make you happy, right?
And a good person who cares about you would be interested in your continued happiness, right?
To the positive opinions of weak and dependent people, right?
Because that makes you kind of a little dictator and it means that you can't be intimate, you can't be vulnerable, you can't be open, you can't be wise, and you can't experience the greatest joy in the world.
And the greatest joy in the world is using your intelligence to light up other people's brains, not to put them down, right?
Right. So, somebody who really cares about you, wants you to be happy, would say, the path that you're taking, while it might give you immediate relief from anxiety and trauma and history and so on, is keeping you barred, is an iron insurmountable wall between you and the greatest joys in life.
Vulnerability, openness, honesty, wisdom.
And the joy of using your obvious gifts to light the world, to inspire knowledge and the desire for truth in others, not to use it as a kind of vanity tool for propping yourself up in a false self kind of way, but to use that energy and that intelligence and those linguistic skills and to judge your success not by whether other people view you as smarter, but by whether other people view themselves as smarter after interacting with you.
That's the real crack, so to speak, in life.
And people always ask me, how is it that you can stay so positive in what it is that you do?
And that's because I know when they ask that question, they have not tasted the truly cosmic joy of lighting up somebody else's mind, of getting them to realize just how brilliant they are and just how wise they are deep down.
That is an unbelievably joyful experience.
And I mean, to be frank, that's what I want for you.
You have these incredible gifts.
You obviously come from a very intelligent family, tragically flawed and dependent upon others, and tragically dictatorial and brutal and weak, right?
Because the flip side of grandiosity is insecurity.
Vanity and insecurity are the the superstructures built on each other around a void of a true self in the middle but what I want for you is the joy that comes from using your gifts to Light other people's minds up to get other people excited about the truth.
Because that's a self-generating and self-sustaining process that actually heals and brightens up the world, right?
You walking around or your dad walking around dominating weak people with your supposed brilliance does not light up the world, right?
And that keeps a fundamental joy out of your life, away from you, that is, oh man, if I could give you five seconds of that joy, If I could wire that into people's brains, the joy of lighting up other people's minds and getting them excited about wisdom and truth and philosophy and knowledge and virtue, this sort of paltry satisfaction and immediate anxiety avoidance that comes from dominating other people would be completely unappealing.
It would be gross compared to that joy, if that makes sense.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And there's a surrender to...
I mean, ego is not about dominance, in my opinion.
This is just my nonsense opinion, so take it for what it's worth, right?
But ego is about surrendering to the truth, right?
Aligning yourself with the truth, being a vessel for the truth.
This all sounds ridiculous and quasi-mystical, but there it is, right?
You want to be a doctor not to make other people stupid about medicine, but to make them excited and interested and able to achieve their own health.
You want to be a nutritionist so that other people become healthy in terms of their eating choices.
You don't want to be a nutritionist so you can say, well, I eat really well and you people eat like crap, but never tell them how to eat better.
Right. You want to be a nutritionist who shows the effects of healthy eating and who also gets other people excited about eating better and more healthy and so on.
All of that joy is nothing compared to the joy of lighting people up about truth and virtue and philosophy.
And if you align yourself towards that goal, and if you say, I am going to use my gifts in the service of a brilliant species that is tragically crushed by history, And institutions, the family, the church, the state, I am going to align my gifts to the service of freeing humanity, of lighting up the minds of humanity, of expanding the horizons of humanity.
There's nothing that is going to make you happier, and there's nothing that's going to bring more love and joy into your life than that.
And I want that for you, and you certainly have the gifts to be able to achieve it.
I think everybody does, but you in particular are closer because of your Intelligence that's innate and language skills and so on, and you're closer to tapping into that.
Again, I think everybody's a genius and everyone's a philosopher, but I think that what you want, you have to have a carrot on the other side of dealing with grandiosity, right?
Because it's going to be painful and it's going to be destabilizing.
What is the carrot on the other side?
The carrot on the other side is the joy.
Of lighting up people. The joy of bringing wisdom and joy to people's lives.
And the love that that generates in the world towards you, right?
It's love in your personal relationships.
It's a wonderful and happy marriage.
It's being a noble and just and beautiful father whose children are going to worship you in the right way and for healthy reasons.
and it's going to be the satisfaction at the end of the day that comes from turning on 50 lights or 5 lights or 1 light in the world, right?
Not leaving a trail of people who feel smaller after you have passed through their lives, who feel diminished, right?
Who feel weaker, who feel less, who feel like...
Because that's a little bit like turning into your dad, which you don't want to do, right?
No.
Deep down, that would be the last thing that you'd want to do is make people feel like you did when your dad was around, right?
Right.
Thank you.
That's it for my speechifying.
I just wanted to...
Because why would you want to deal with this?
I'm just saying that on the other side is a love and a joyful existence.
And I'm not saying you don't experience joy now and so on, but this is beyond what you can think of before you taste it.
And I know because I lived on the other side for a long time and now I live on this side.
Oh, man, it's a beautiful thing.
Thank you.
This was lovely.
Bye.
Well, I'm glad that it was helpful.
I know I didn't give you anything particularly practical to work on, but I think the first thing to do is to figure out what the goal is.
Why would you want to climb over this barbed wire?
And I hope that I've given you some sense to the beauty that's on the other side.
How are you feeling now at the end of this conversation?
I'm feeling a bit clearer.
Good. Okay, well, I guess I'll try and quit while I'm ahead.
And if you want to do a follow-up, you can mull on this for a bit.
If you want to do a follow-up, I'm more than happy, but I can give you some more practical ways to achieve it.
But I just wanted to give you a sense of the purpose rather than the...
Like, if you give a man a why, says Nietzsche, he can bear almost any how, right?
And the problem is with challenging these demons within us that sometimes we really don't have a sense of the why and when the why fades so does the how and the means and the goal and the desire and the steps and so on.
So if you keep that glory in your sites, then you can get there and you will.
Sure, that makes a lot of sense.
Okay. Well, listen, again, all the sympathy in the world.
This was a truly nightmarish existence that you grew up in.
Obviously, you know what I would say with regards to your family.
I'm not sure exactly what your circumstances are with them, but these are not people that I would have in my life.
No, I've broken with them, yeah.
Okay, okay, good. Well, now you can start to build a new world out of the crater, and I hope that you will.
Thanks so much. Thank you. Keep me posted about how it goes.
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